A Global Forum for Naval Historical Scholarship

International Journal of Naval History

April 2006
Volume 5 Number 1


AVIAN ANTI-SUBMARINE WARFARE PROPOSALS IN BRITAIN, 1915-18:
THE ADMIRALTY AND THOMAS MILLS

David A. H. Wilson
Cumbria Institute of the Arts, United Kingdom


Abstract

Attempts were made throughout the First World War to discover means of countering
the enemy submarine. Both defensive and offensive measures were assessed and
sometimes implemented, with varying degrees of success. So serious were the loss
caused by the U-boats in their campaign of unrestricted warfare and the resulting
effect on national morale that the authorities in Britain were soon prepared to consider
from all quarters every proposal to locate, track, destroy, neutralize or evade the U-
boat. Systematic assessment and experiment began in 1915 with the establishment of
the Board of Invention and Research (BIR), and then continued in late 1916 with the
creation under naval control of the Anti-Submarine Division (ASD). To develop anti-
submarine measures, as well as others to contribute to winning this struggle of
invention, the BIR invited and received suggestions from scientists, naval personnel
and members of the public. The latter source produced many bizarre ideas, but some
of them were considered worth investigating. Among these were proposals to train
gulls and other birds to indicate the presence of U-boats.
1
In this paper, the historical
and organizational context of the investigations is discussed before an examination is
made of the proposals themselves.


Introduction

A matter of very grave concern soon after the beginning of the First World War was
the disastrous effect of the depredations of U-boats, whose large-scale and seemingly
irresistible destruction of merchant shipping caused not only great loss of life but also
a fear that a nation of 45 million, which had possessed in 1914 approximately half the
worlds merchant tonnage, would be fatally starved of materials and food. Desperate
attempts were made to find reliable means of locating U-boats for destruction, and
because of the seriousness of the threat, all manner of possibilities were considered.
However, no solution was found until, with the entry into the war of the United States
in April 1917, sufficient numbers of destroyers were made available to test and
confirm the effectiveness of the defensive convoy system.

The U-boat campaign represented an effective type of early psychological warfare
which was based on the scientific and technological success of the enemy. It was in
1
these circumstances that the British government decided to attempt a response
through a programme of secret research part of which depended itself on psychology
and the effective control of behaviour - that of the seagull and sea lion.
2
To meet other
wartime requirements, the use of sniffer dogs and carrier pigeons was already
established, quite well known to the public, and the result more of simple training
than applied science. The new research would bring together scientists, naturalists,
circus-trainers and sceptical naval officers, but the scientists represented other
disciplines than animal psychology, and there is no evidence that any of the few
British animal psychologists who could have offered useful advice were appraised of
this secret programme or approached for assistance.
3
After the end of the war, the
manipulation of the behaviour of animals for military purposes was neglected in
Britain but developed in the United States, where the principles of behaviourism were
found to be most appropriate and applied to procedures such as the guidance of
missiles by pigeons which had been subjected to operant conditioning, and the
detection of submerged objects by sea lions and dolphins.
4


The U-boat crisis

By late 1916, J ellicoe recognized a serious danger that our losses in merchant ships,
combined with the losses in neutral merchant ships, may, by the early summer of
1917, have such a serious effect upon the import of food and other necessaries into the
Allied countries as to force us into accepting peace terms which the military position
on the Continent would not justify, and which would fall short of our desires.
5
He
considered U-boats the most serious menace with which the empire has ever been
faced.
6
Beatty saw the danger at that time as jeopardising the fate of the nation and
seriously interfering with the successful prosecution of the war.
7
An Admiralty
official memorandum to the Government admitted: Of all the problems which the
Admiralty have to consider, no doubt the most formidable and the most embarrassing
is that raised by submarine attack upon merchant vessels. No conclusive answer has
as yet been found to this form of warfare; perhaps no conclusive answer ever will be
found. We must for the present be content with palliation.
8

The development of the successful U-boat campaign against commerce in the second
half of 1916 had been a logical strategic response, since

After the battle [J utland], as before it, we strangled German supplies
by means of our agreements with neutrals, our economic strength, and
our intercepting cruiser squadrons [and] the German Naval Chiefs had
been instantly compelled to realise that if Great Britain was to be
overthrown at sea, the blow must be struck, not by the High Sea Fleet,
but by the submarines.
9


Supported by the army high command, as well as the press and public, Admiral von
Holtzendorff, Chief of the Naval Staff, then urged unrestricted submarine warfare.
10

By J anuary 1917 German civilians were facing starvation as a result of the successful
blockade of their ports,
11
and the war on land had reached stalemate. It was thought
that an unrestricted campaign could return the compliment of crippling shortages with
a conclusive effect, promising a quicker victory, in the meantime instilling what
Holtzendorff described as the psychological elements of fear and panic. At the time
2
of its announcement in February the Germans hoped, and J ellicoe and others believed,
that unrestricted submarine warfare, resulting in sinkings of at least 600,000 tons per
month, could force Britain to make peace by the following October. Americas entry
into the war (6 April 1917) because of the new campaign, was both envisaged and
considered a risk worth taking, since the introduction of properly prepared land forces
into the continental theatre would be too late to affect the anticipated outcome a few
months ahead. According to Admiral Mller, Chief of the Naval Cabinet, this
decision was the last shot in our locker.
12

3

Fig 1. Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff. Photograph courtesy of Bibliothek fr
Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart.

4
Losses of British, neutral and allied mercantile gross tonnage from submarine and (to
a much lesser extent) mine attack had steadily risen since J uly 1916, when the figure
was 110,757 tons. By October it was 352,902 tons, then in February 1917, 500,573
tons (of which 256,000 were British losses from submarine attack only), and in April,
870,359 tons (513,000).
13
At the end of April, Sir Leo Chiozza Money, Parliamentary
Secretary to the Ministry of Shipping, estimated that, after allowing for replacements,
the 8,394,000-odd tons of shipping in the import and export service of Britain would
probably be reduced to 4,812,000 at the end of the year, allowing for no logistical or
trade use but only emergency food supplies.
14
By February 1917, 140 U-boats were
available for use in home waters. Approximately 8 U-boats a month were being added
in 1917, while British production of destroyers was only 4-5 per month maximum,
and of submarines, two per month. No increase in output of destroyers was possible
for the 15 months ahead, because at least 15 months was the time taken to build one
(in Germany it was 12 months). British submarines took up to two years to build,
German as little as six months. Finally, the construction rate of British merchant ships
was also slow. Only 22 U-boats had been sunk in 1916, mostly when working on the
surface. Trawlers were too slow to engage them, and motor launches needed good
weather and to be near the coast. J ellicoe was reluctant to spare destroyers in early
1917 because of a shortage of depth-charges and the absence of an effective
submarine detection device.
15

After America entered the war, a new supply of destroyers was made available, and
the development of the convoy system of protection became possible.
16
Rear Admiral
Sims, commander of the American naval forces, described the successful arrival of an
experimental convoy on 20 May 1917 as one of the great turning-points of the
war.
17
Convoys led to an increased use of depth-charges by escort vessels, and as the
rate of U-boat successes began to decline after August 1917 the original expectations
of the German leadership were eventually confounded. Meanwhile, Holtzendorff
rejected a promising modification of German tactics to deal with convoys, suggested
by Kommodore Hermann Bauer. This was later used in the Second World War as the
system of wolf-pack with directing mother ship.
18



The Board of Invention and Research, national morale and public involvement

Established by A.J . Balfour in J uly 1915 and gradually to dissolve after September
1917, the role of the Board of Invention and Research (BIR) was to evaluate
problems, propose solutions and organize research schemes, at the same time sifting,
assessing and, as appropriate, developing the inventions and ideas of others. Section
II
19
eventually received by far the largest government grant.

There were, from the start, tensions between the Royal Navy and civilian science,
exacerbated by the BIRs independence from naval control, by the abrasive character
of the Chairman of the BIR, Lord Fisher, who was not universally liked in the Royal
Navy and who wanted to exert an influence in the conduct of the war, and by the
reluctance of the Royal Navy to countenance involvement by civilians in the solution
of problems it saw as its own responsibility. Accordingly, J ellicoe as Commander-in-
Chief of the Grand Fleet had written to the Admiralty on 29 October 1916 advising
further, Royal Navy oriented, organization against the submarine threat,
20
and on 10
December 1916 Professor W.H. Bragg of Section II complained to Sir J .J . Thomson
5
(one of the Central Committee of the BIR): We are practically cut off from all
contact with the navy, except such part of it as is hostile to BIR.
21
That month the
organization of anti-submarine work was improved by the creation of the Anti-
Submarine Division (ASD) under the direction of Rear Admiral A.L. Duff.
22
J ellicoe
later reflected that the ASD received much valuable assistance from the great civilian
scientists who gave such ready help during the war, the function of the naval officers
working with the scientists being to see that the effort was being directed along
practical lines.
23


Fig 2. Admiral A L Duff with (left to right) Admiral Benson USN, Mr Daniels and Sir
Eric Geddes. Photograph copyright and courtesy of the Imperial War Museum,
London. Negative number Q19398.

By April 1917 The most popular game on both sides of the Atlantic was devising
means of checking the underwater ship. Every newspaper, every magazine, every
public man, and every gentleman at his club had a favourite scheme for defeating the
U-boat campaign.
24
Nearly 13,000 British lives were eventually lost because of U-
boats, and in April 1917, one ship out of four that left the UK never came home.
Concerning such losses, the government was driven to publish false shipping returns
of entries and sailings, so that this disguise might avert public panic.
25

The problem of maintaining national morale was made difficult by the level of public
anxiety and frustration resulting from large-scale U-boat successes.
26
The submarine
as a modern weapon was proving itself for the first time, and in its sinister way
6
represented a triumph of new technology and ruthlessness over the accepted traditions
of conflict at sea. The Titanic disaster was fresh in peoples minds when the Lusitania
was torpedoed, so that the horrors of destruction of large surface vessels and their
occupants by hidden dangers of the deep became a morbid obsession. The Press was,
of course, visibly restless and disturbed, too, and both the Government and the Naval
High Command were criticised.
27
After the failure early in the war of the Channel
boom defence, reliance had next been placed on mines and on an auxiliary coastal
yacht and motor-boat patrol under the command of Admiral Sir Frederick Inglefield,
before his retirement in 1916 at the age of 61, when operations at sea then became co-
ordinated by the newly formed ASD. This patrol has been described as ineffective and
ludicrous. Only one in ten of his vessels were (lightly) armed; one in 85 had wireless;
and there were too few to patrol vast areas. To deal with a submarine on encounter,
teams of two swimmers were organized in each motor launch. One man carried a
black bag, the other a hammer. The plan was that if a periscope was sighted, the
launch would cruise as near to it as possible, then the swimmers would dive in, seize
the periscope, and after one man had placed the black bag over it, the other would
attempt to shatter the glass with the hammer. Inglefields other brain child was to
attempt to train seagulls to defecate on periscopes, and for a short while a remote
corner of Poole harbour in Dorset was littered with dummy periscopes and hopefully
incontinent seagulls.
28




Fig 3. Admiral Sir Frederick Inglefield, when Rear Admiral in command of the 4
th

Cruiser Squadron, 1907. National Maritime Museum, London. Negative number
P6010.

7

In these circumstances the creation of the BIR may have been a mixture of
propaganda and expediency.
29
Scientists were publicly pressing the Government to
make better use of their talents, while figures like H.G. Wells emphasised that the war
was essentially a struggle of invention. It was clearly necessary, if only for the sake
of national morale, that the Government reassure the public, through the
establishment of an organization like the BIR, that all opportunities were being
exploited, especially to overcome the U-boat. During the course of its existence the
BIR received and assessed over 37,500 suggestions and inventions from the general
public, of which about 14,000 concerned submarines, anti-submarine measures and
wireless telegraphy.
30


These suggestions, many received and redirected by the naval authorities, varied
considerably in value, and only a few were acted on. (Beatty had also earlier
encouraged his officers and ratings to submit ideas, which might earn a reward, but
there were no workable results.) Suggestions from all sources were categorized into
Proposals by Officers of the Fleet; Device and suggestions from the Admiralty, for
example the use of cork float lines, dummy submarines and explosive chain trawls;
and Suggestions by arm-chair critics, such as that from a Surrey farmer on 28 April
1917 to send out small armed boats protected with a three-foot-thick layer of pressed
hay padding along the side, covered in painted canvas.
31
It was suggested to Section
II of the BIR that specially selected strong swimmers be armed with sharp pointed
hammers with which to pierce the hull of a hostile submarine;
32
or that green paint
poured on the sea could obscure enemy periscopes and make a U-boat commander
fatally confused about his depth. Another suggested that the dangers of a bright,
moonlit night could be reduced by training a circle of 24 searchlights at the moon
itself, throwing black or dark-tinted rays. As a change from frequent
recommendations concerning the use of strong magnets to transfix the U-boats, in
1917 a gentleman advised J ellicoe that in order to expose enemy submarines barrels
of Enos Fruit Salt should be placed in strategic positions on the bottom of the North
Sea: when the presence of U-boats was suspected the barrels would be opened by
remote control from points ashore and the vessels would surface involuntarily on a
mass of effervescing bubbles, then to be despatched by gunfire. On one occasion a
psychic was permitted to enter the Admiraltys submarine tracking room but failed to
locate any U-boats by dangling her threaded needle over charts of the Atlantic,
33

while remote dowsing was suggested by Sir William Barrett, supported by the BIRs
own psychically-inclined Sir Oliver Lodge.

The introduction of the convoy system in 1917 and the development of ASDIC
shortly afterwards meant that the seagull proposals appeared especially obsolete only
a short time after they had been considered, and although assessed in conditions of
secrecy, public references to the proposals were permitted by the censor from 1918.
The decision to turn to seagulls and, in a more extensive series of trials, to sea lions,
was no doubt prompted by the slow and uncertain progress with more conventional
anti-submarine measures. Work on the hydrophone, begun in 1915, continued all the
while, but it was relegated as surely as the seagull and sea lion as soon as convoys
proved their worth and when ASDIC arrived.


8
The seagull proposals

Between 1915 and 1917, the BIR considered the use of gulls and other birds to
indicate the presence of U-boats, and from early 1917 until the end of the war the idea
was energetically promoted by Thomas Mills, who had emigrated to Australia in the
early 1860s and returned to England in the mid 1880s, having made his fortune as a
gold mine pioneer and owner in Queensland.
34
The BIR eventually commissioned
trials in summer 1917, but then decided to abandon the possibility. It had not invited
Thomas Mills to participate as an adviser, while in the case of the sea lion trials,
Captain J oseph Woodward was commissioned to work with his music-hall animals
under the supervision of BIR scientists. Woodwards skills were unique, and
necessary to the practical trials, but the idea shared with Mills did not require the
latters participation in a test: W.H. Hudson and Richard Kearton were instead
consulted as specialists in bird behaviour. The BIR continued to be lobbied by Mills,
who carried out his own trials at his own expense, and who became increasingly
exasperated at the BIRs reluctance to continue to consider a scheme which had
become an obsession with him.

The Admiralty and the BIR had received suggestions to train gulls to detect
periscopes in 1915 but the matter was not taken further until raised again and referred
to Rear Admiral A.L. Duff, Director of the Anti-Submarine Division, in late 1916. It
was proposed that merchant ships should tow a dummy periscope from which at
intervals food would be discharged like sausage-meat from a machine to teach the
birds to associate periscopes near ships with food, leading them to swoop on the
periscopes of real submarines. Dr Chalmers Mitchell (Secretary of the Zoological
Society of London) and Sir Charles Parsons of the Central Committee of the BIR
were keen to try the scheme, but Duff was concerned that it could result in many
scares.
35
(It is probable that Duff had little time for this proposal, and he later
expressed anger at the BIRs parallel work with sea lions.
36
) Commodore Hall told
the Sub Committee that the idea had often been considered and that in the previous
autumn he had been instructed to prepare plans for the occasional discharge of fish
from the torpedo tube of a submarine to ascertain bird attentiveness, but the matter
had not been progressed. He felt it might be difficult to imitate the true appearance
and steady movement of a periscope, and that captains might come to rely too much
on gulls, the watch kept on merchant ships being in any case very bad. Another
commentator also pointed out that gulls are not found very far out at sea.
37
However,
the Sub Committee decided that a trial feeding mechanism should be devised.

At the meeting of the Central Committee of the BIR on 10 May 1917, presided over
by Lord Fisher, it was reported: In consequence of a suggestion made by the Board
of Invention and Research to test the possibilities of attracting seagulls to the
periscopes of submarines by ejecting food therefrom and thereby training them to
follow and locate enemy submarines, the Admiralty have approved an experiment
being made in [submarine] B3 and have asked BIR to provide a suitable food box for
the purpose.
38
During the Sub Committee meeting of 22 and 23 May 1917,
39
Paget as
secretary reported that a Mr Carnegie was constructing an apparatus for intermittently
feeding birds from a dummy periscope, to be fitted on B3 for trials in the Firth of
Forth, as proposed by Commodore Hall and approved by the Third Sea Lord.
40
W.H.
Hudson, the ornithologist and popular nature essayist, had been invited to assist in the
experiments.
41
At this meeting the idea of using pigeons was raised: a ship could carry
9
and control these birds. Commander Middleton who was present added that he had
had experience with pigeons on board and that they would fly around at great
distances. Paget replied that this idea had been put forward before, by a Mr Kingston
Clarke, but that the officer in charge of the pigeon loft at HMS Excellent, Whale
Island, had not considered it feasible. Middleton was asked to discuss the suitability
of this and other species of birds with Hudson. Soon after, at the meeting of 19 J une
1917, Paget reported that a falconer had suggested the use of hawks, but after later
discussions with him the idea was considered impracticable.
42


Fig 4. Richard Kearton, emerging from camouflage. From his Wild Natures Ways,
London: Cassell & Co, 1903. (Cassell PLC is a division of the Orion Publishing Group,
London.) Image supplied by Special Collections, J B Priestley Library, University of
Bradford. (The author has endeavoured to trace the copyright holder of this
illustration. If he has unwittingly infringed copyright, please contact him.)

The approved programme of experiments was placed under the supervision of
Richard Kearton, who was hopeful of success,
43
but they were short-lived, and on 7
August 1917 the secretary reported to the Sub Committee that difficulties had arisen
as to the use of B3 in these experiments, and the matter had been referred again to the
Admiralty. The Third Sea Lord soon decided that the experiments should be dropped
altogether.
44
This was acknowledged at the meeting of the Central Committee on 30
August, when it was noted that Richard Kearton had been informed accordingly and
10
thanked.
45
The difficulties referred to may not have been technical or experimental
problems, but rather those of a kind regularly experienced by civilian scientists and
BIR staff when dealing with Captain Ryan, who was in charge of B3 and the
Admiralty Experimental Station at Hawkcraig Point, Aberdour, Fifeshire, a Royal
Navy hydrophone research and training establishment. Ryan epitomized the unco-
operativeness of naval officers in business they considered the sole province of the
Royal Navy, and, following his appointment to work alongside Ryan as Resident
Director of the civilian scientists at Hawkcraig in 1916, Bragg had met only with
frustration.
46
In J anuary 1917 BIR research activities had then been transferred to
Parkeston Quay, Harwich. Notwithstanding representation since spring, 1916 of
senior naval personnel on BIR committees, tension between it and the ASD grew
during 1917 and already by February the consulting panel of the BIR had presented
Balfour as First Lord with a critical Memorandum concerning serious shortcomings in
Relations of the BIR with Other Departments of the Admiralty.
47



Fig 5. Captain C P Ryan RN, photographed between 1908 and 1911 when serving on
destroyers. Photograph courtesy of Captain John Aston RN.
11

The Grand Fleet Secret Packs provide some indication of the inevitable failure of the
intended experimentation at Hawkcraig.
48
Vice Admiral Sir Richard Peirse, who
served on the Central Committee of the BIR, had contacted the Commodore
(Submarines) on 17 J uly to report Keartons suggestion that before attempting
experiments with a food ejecting periscope, it would be advisable to begin with hand
feeding experiments from B3. A few days later, on 22 J uly, Kearton wrote to Ryan:
I have been asked by Vice Admiral Peirse to assist you in carrying out some
experiments on seagulls in connection with Submarines, adding that he would like to
photograph the accomplishments. The next day, Ryan complained to the Commander-
in-Chief, Grand Fleet (Admiral Sir David Beatty, who had been based at Rosyth,
living in Aberdour, and who was a personal friend):

I have the honour to transmit for your information copy of a Reference
Sheet from the Board of Invention and Research, forwarded to me by
Commodore (S), Admiralty, suggesting that Submarine B.3 be
employed for training seagulls to locate submarines, with a further letter
received from the expert who it is proposed should supervise this work.
It is submitted:-
(1) That Submarine B.3 is constantly employed here[on work related
to hydrophones]
(2) That the training of seagulls would interfere seriously with this work,
and that the advantages that might be gained are so extremely doubtful,
that it would be inadvisable for B.3 to be detailed for this purpose.

Beatty replied to Ryan on 27 J uly, suggesting that the seagull trials should not
interfere with the hydrophone work, reassuring him that B3 was still under his orders,
and asking him to inform him later if co-operation with Kearton had been
inconvenient. It would appear that Ryan had already decided that such co-operation
would indeed be inconvenient, and no record has been found of any actual use of B3
before the decision in August to abort the project.

It is interesting to speculate on the reaction of Ryan if he had been ordered to co-
operate in an extended experimental programme with Thomas Mills. Encouraged by
his own observations of the behaviour of gulls in the presence of submarines off the
south coast of England, Mills had sent his first letter to the BIR on 27 February 1917,
when he described a method which closely resembled that later considered by Section
II at its meeting of 24 April:

Have a small float containing a dummy periscope; the float to contain a
quantity of rough food, say dog or cats flesh or any other food which will
float on the water. The machine to discharge small quantities every few
minutes so the birds will see the food floating on the sea. The float could
be towed behind a vessel at a fair distance and made so it will sink, as
when the tow-line break [to keep this secret method from the enemy]. I
consider if the experiment was tried first near some port or near where the
enemy submarines were working, I believe the birds in about two weeks
would be thoroughly trained to fly around the periscope or over the wake
of a submarine. I would suggest a small mirror or bright piece of metal
12
placed on top of a dummy for the first few days to attract the birds. The
experiment will cost a very small sum as you have the means of carrying
it out. I hope you will try it, that is, if it is not already in use. I would be
very glad to give all the assistance I could or do it myself if I had the
mechanical means in a suitable place and assistance from the
Government, not in money.
49


Fig 6. Thomas Mills with his wounded son, Charles, of the Australian Light Horse, at
the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth in April, 1917. From The Fateful Sea-Gull,
Reading: Bradley & Son, Ltd, 1919, p. 55. (The author has endeavoured to trace the
copyright holder of this illustration. If he has unwittingly infringed copyright, please
contact him.)
13

Mills was informed in a reply simply that similar proposals had previously been
considered, and there was never at any stage reference to Mills by name in BIR
minutes. But he then decided to construct his own machine, having moved for
medical reasons to Scotland for the more bracing climate. Clockmakers in Edinburgh
and Aberdeen appeared at the same time unwilling to help build it and too curious as
to the secret purpose of the machine. Mills eventually found a firm willing to start
work for him. He supervised the work closely, and had to be reassured that certain
visitors to the premises, looking to him like Germans or continentals, were no more
than clockmakers or ice-cream vendors, and not spies.

By August 1917, when the BIR decided to end its trials with submarine B3, Mills was
ready to put his machine to the test, and he successfully sought an interview for this
purpose at the Royal Naval base at Granton with Admiral Sir J ames Starten, who then
noted that seagulls would not be able to distinguish between friendly submarines and
U-boats.
50
Mills was taken aback by this and subsequently advocated the retention of
British and allied submarines in port, so that the use of trained gulls would not result
in any mistake and because, in any case, the destruction of the U-boat (by his method)
was now all that mattered. Returning south in some agitation, for patriotic reasons he
declined a suggestion from a friend that his idea might be developed in the United
States, but in September instead approached the BIR once more, via his lawyers, this
time giving details of the machine as it had taken shape, being small and torpedo-like,
weighing about 20 lbs, costing about 5 apart from the float, and able when under tow
to discharge small pieces of tape food in various quantities and thicknesses, at
distances of up to a mile, and either near the surface or up to 100 ft below. Mills
requested permission to test it and to buy petrol for the towing launch, but the BIR
repeated its rejection of this method and stated its resulting inability to arrange
permissions. On receipt of this rebuff, Mills approached Patent Agents and instructed
them to draw up a patent for his machine, dated 4 September 1917. Under the heading
Improvements in Apparatus for use in connection with the Location of Submarines,
the following details were given:

According to this invention I attach to a float, preferably formed like a
submarine, an apparatus consisting of a receptacle for material and means
for cutting up and delivering the material into the water. The apparatus
preferably consists of a square tube to receive the material having in it a
pusher which intermittently expels the material from the tube, and a
revolving knife which cuts the material as it issues from the tube. The
pusher and knife are actuated either by means of a screw which revolves
as the apparatus is drawn through the water or by means of a clockwork or
electric motor. On the shaft of the screw or motor is a pinion in gear with
a toothed wheel on another shaft upon which is mounted a revolving knife
and another toothed wheel having a portion of its teeth omitted, the
toothed wheel gearing with a nut on a screw on the stem of the pusher
causing the pusher to move intermittentlyThe food is placed in the tube
in layers separated by paper or other material so that it forms ribbons
when cut and is in such a condition that when it is delivered into the water
it floats upon the surfaceThe apparatus may be drawn beneath the
surface of the water by means of a cable or may be attached to a buoy.
51

14

Fig 7. Thomas Millss patented Sea Gull Decoy. From The Fateful Sea-Gull,
Reading: Bradley & Son, Ltd, 1919, p. 66. (The author has endeavoured to trace the
copyright holder of this illustration. If he has unwittingly infringed copyright, please
contact him.)

Mills was now on his own, and somewhat embittered by the failure of the authorities
to realize that his method of submarine detection could save life and merchant
tonnage, and win the war. He moved to Exmouth to carry out private trials with his
No. 1 machine, and was given working space and the use of a launch, before he
acquired his own, by the director of an east-coast steamship company, but in the
search for bait encountered unco-operativeness from local butchers and fishermen,
and had generally to rely on labour which he considered lethargic and expensive. He
cooked the offal himself, and Many an evening I had to walk back to my hotel
52
dog-
tired, and I did not seem to get any pity from anyone. He also complained: Some of
my daughters even said, Father has a bee in his bonnet. Sea trials followed, with
onlookers again suspected as spies.

A local report on Millss activities which was not vetoed by the censor appeared in
The Exmouth Chronicle on 8 December 1917, with further, illustrated reports on 16
February 1918 and in The Exmouth Journal on 23 February 1918. He told the
Journal: I have found that by towing the dummy 200 or 300 yards behind the boat
and making it show its periscope, it attracts birds. I then make it dive, and the gulls
will follow it while it is under the water. Mills recounted the experiences of whalers
who used gulls to indicate the presence of whales, and he believed they could identify
and be trained to follow submarines deep under water as well as at periscope depth.
53

Meanwhile, in August, theBystander had published a cartoon by W. Heath Robinson,
If Noah had been a German (perhaps in this case Tirpitz), which Mills believed was
an oblique reference if not to his own work then to the idea of using submarines to
eject training bait, an idea which had been trivialized in the cartoon as a failed
German experiment, thwarted by fish, in order to avoid censorship.
54
This idea had
15
also been mentioned by Commodore Hall,
55
and Mills reported that a naval friend
told him it was what they had been doing.
56


Fig 8. Cartoon from the Bystander, 29 August, 1917, by W Heath Robinson.
Reproduced by courtesy of Pollinger Limited and the Estate of Mrs J C Robinson.

16
With his idea patented, and in the absence of support from the Admiralty, at the end
of 1917 Mills decided he would send details of it, with photographs, to the national
press and to political acquaintances including Members of Parliament and the
Australian premier. He stated: I am fully prepared to hand to the Bank of England
5,000
57
in Government Security - the English or our Allies securities - that the
submarine pest will practically be got rid of in six or eight months after the Admiralty
have properly taken my proposals in hand.
58
The limited response caused added
frustration, and lack of newspaper coverage was blamed on the intervention of the
Government Censor, as referred to in a letter from The Aberdeen Free Press of 14
J anuary 1918. But mention of the possible training of seagulls to indicate the presence
of enemy submarines had appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette on 7 J anuary 1918.

Mills continued his trials until September 1918, in the meantime approaching once
more (26 February 1918) and receiving a rebuff from the BIR (6 March 1918) when
attempting to re-establish the credibility of his invention and secure for the Petrol
Controllers its sanction for the purchase of petrol. Mills wrote with details of his
method to Thomas Edison, but received a terse reply suggesting he should make a
more formal approach to the Naval Consulting Board.
59
Although Mills stated that he
did not do this because he was anxious that England should have the credit, the San
Francisco Chronicle published on 10 March 1918 a sensational and imaginative
front-page article on the effectiveness of the seagull method in undermining Admiral
Tirpitzs strategy, reducing him to the condition of Coleridges Ancient Mariner. It
is believed by the British Navy that the gulls, being carrion hunters, were first
attracted to the U-boats by the frequent dead floating near them after the sinking of
the steamers...They associate a U-boat with a feastcivilization has the sea-gull to
thank. Mills did not hesitate to assume that his work was the real basis of the story,
and in his book this illustrated newspaper article is reproduced in modified form to
incorporate the drawing of his patented device and a sea-trial photograph. He then
finally decided to promote his idea within the American naval establishment, as when,
on 16 May, he wrote to a friend with naval contacts who served on the Shipping
Control Committee in New York.
60
Later, between September and December, he was
in correspondence with the editors of Popular Science Monthly of New York, firstly
to establish precedence over a Dr Pentz whom they had cited in an article concerning
the seagull method, and then to forward his own photographs and patent details.
61

Training gulls in August, using dummy submarine No. 4, Mills had by then won
permission to use petrol for his launch, Pride of the Harbour, which he had previously
converted to run on paraffin. Writing to the Exmouth Chronicle under the nom de
plume of Super Tax Payer, he still hoped the authorities would try his method once
more: I believe about eighteen months back they tried his plan and failed, through
not following his instructions; and, as before, he offered to underwrite the trials. In
any case, he noted, If the Government did once get in a shipload of seals at an
enormous price to catch the submarines, the English people did not laugh then, if the
Germans did, for we are all liable to make mistakes.
62
In September, Mills left
Exmouth to return to his home in Sandhurst, Berkshire, believing that the role of the
seagull in combating submarine piracy would remain essential for the future security
of the civilized world.
63



17



Fig 9. San Francisco Chronicle: front page feature of 10 March, 1918. Reproduced
by courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle.



18

Fig 10. Pride of the Harbour, carrying patented device. From The Fateful Sea-
Gull, Reading: Bradley & Son, Ltd, 1919, p. 68. (The author has endeavoured to
trace the copyright holder of this illustration. If he has unwittingly infringed
copyright, please contact him.)

Conclusion

Largely because of difficulties in its relations with the Royal Navy, the role of the
BIR was declining in mid 1917. Its willingness to consider imaginative and surprising
possibilities for anti-submarine measures, such as the seagull and sea lion proposals,
made it increasingly vulnerable at a time when its credibility as an organization was
under the closest scrutiny. These proposals represented a healthy inventiveness
encouraged by crisis, but such acceptance of new ideas in a conservative naval
environment was inevitably risky. With the vindication of convoys and then the
development of ASDIC soon after the end of the war, these ideas, already declassified
and in the public domain, were quickly forgotten as embarrassments.

The patriotic Thomas Mills, convinced of his method to the end, displayed some
typical characteristics of the self-made man, being energetic, determined, self-
reliant, thick-skinned and self-assured. He wrote in 1919: I fully believe the British
Empire would have gone ahead if the Authorities had carried out my invention for the
training of sea-gulls in a proper manner in February 1917.
64
Frustration with the
lack of interest in his work shown by these authorities made him bitter and critical,
and his stubbornness soon gave way to obsession, so that his family appeared to have
come to regard him as something of an uncompromising fanatic, judging by his own
acknowledgement of their points of view. His decision to write the somewhat
rambling and repetitive The Fateful Sea-gull no doubt gave him the opportunity to
vent this frustration: I have had many hardships in my life, especially about fifty
years ago in exploring and working, and even being stuck up by floods without food,
but I never felt that as much as I have the rebuffs and insults experienced during the
past two years, prior to the signing of the Armistice.
65

Although the first successful transatlantic convoy was realized in May 1917, Mills
made no mention either of this or of the effectiveness of the earlier Scandinavian
convoys; nor did he acknowledge that, as a result of the adoption of the convoy
19
system, the success of the U-boats declined in the second half of 1917. Instead, to
emphasize the continuing need to apply his method, he cited the more pessimistic
commentaries about the remaining U-boat menace, ironically echoing redundant
German propaganda.

________


Acknowledgements

Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of
the Controller of Her Majestys Stationery Office. The author is grateful to the
following for their valuable help in the preparation of this paper:

Captain J ohn Aston RN; Margaret Bidmead, Royal Navy Submarine Museum; Rachel
Bradshaw, Clare Daniel, Lesley Harding and Helen Milroy, Cumbria Institute of the
Arts; Dianne Byrne, J ohn Oxley Library, Queensland, Australia; Commander Richard
Compton-Hall RN; Stephen Courtney, Royal Naval Museum; Paul Cox, National
Portrait Gallery; Alison Cullingford, J .B. Priestley Library, University of Bradford;
J oanne Devereux, Pollinger Limited; Gary Fong, San Francisco Chronicle; Stephen
Forshaw, Archives, Dorset County Council; Anne Gleave, Merseyside Maritime
Museum; Lieutenant Commander A.M. Hancock RN, HMS Raleigh; Rear Admiral
Richard Hill; David Inglefield; Andrew Lambert, Navy Records Society; Iain
MacKenzie and J enny Wraight, Admiralty Library; Doug McCarthy and David
Taylor, National Maritime Museum; W.R. Mitchell; J anice Mullin, Geoff OConnor,
Yvonne Oliver and Chris Plant, Imperial War Museum; Lieutenant Commander J .W.
Parrett RN, HMS Scotia; Graeme Powell, National Library of Australia; Louisa
Pritchard and J essica Purdue, Orion Publishing Group; Rachel Rowe, Cambridge
University Library; J ames Smith, Booktrust; Kate Tildesley, Naval Historical Branch,
Ministry of Defence; Heather Turnbull, Aberdour Library; Liza Verity, Society for
Nautical Research; Bill Walmsley; David Watkins, Poole Local History Centre; Gary
Weir, Editor, International Journal of Naval History; Thomas Weis, Bibliothek fr
Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart.


1
The proposals are mentioned in a few secondary sources and with varying degrees of accuracy:
Hackmann, W.D. (1984) Seek & Strike. Sonar, anti-submarine warfare and the Royal Navy 1914-54.
London: HMSO, pp. 19-20; Lubow, R.E. (1977) The War Animals. The training and use of animals as
weapons of war. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., pp. 31-2; Gusewelle, J .K. (1971)
The Board of Invention and Research: a case study in the relations between academic science and the
Royal Navy in Great Britain during the First World War. University of California, Irvine: unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, p. 41; and Kemp, P.K. (1952) H.M. Submarines. London: Herbert J enkins, pp. 102-3.

2
The sea lion trials, and the circumstances in which they were approved and managed, are discussed in
D.A.H. Wilson, Sea lions, greasepaint and the U-boat threat: Admiralty scientists turn to the music
hall in 1916. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, lv (2001), 425-455 (accessible
online), and Admiralty science, U-boats and the performing arts, 1916-1917. Journal of Defence
Science, vol. 6 (2), 157-167.

3
The help of other psychologists was enlisted after the formation by a group of businessmen of the
Lancashire Anti-Submarine Committee in 1917, under the chairmanship of Sir Ernest Rutherford. Staff
of the Cambridge Psychological Laboratory participated in the selection and training of personnel for
20

hydrophone work. (Among the Cambridge staff was Miss E.M. Smith, the animal psychologist, but she
was not invited to become involved in the work with sea-lions or birds described below.) Bartlett, F.C.
(1937) Cambridge, England 1887-1937. American Journal of Psychology, 50: 97-110.

4
See, for example, J.H. Capshew (1993) Engineering behavior: Project Pigeon, World War II, and the
conditioning of B.F. Skinner. Technology and Culture, 34 (4), 835-857; M.E. Conboy (1975) Project
quick find: a marine mammal system for object recovery. Rapp. P.-v. Reun. Cons. Int. Explor. Mer.,
vol. 169, 487-500; and V. Murphy (2003) Let slip the sea lions of war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2839155.stm.

5
Newbolt, H. (1928) History of the Great War based on official documents by direction of the
Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Naval Operations. Vol. IV. London:
Longmans, Green and Co., p. 323.

6
Admiral of the Fleet, The Rt Hon. The Earl J ellicoe (1934) The submarine peril. The Admiralty policy
in 1917. London: Cassell, p. 5.

7
Newbolt (1928) op. cit., p. 324.

8
Newbolt (1928) op. cit., pp. 323-4.

9
Newbolt (1928) op. cit., pp. 27 & 323.

10
Unrestricted Submarine Warfare meant the sinking of merchant-ships by torpedoes at sight and
without warning. J ellicoe in Foreword, p.viii, to Gibson, R.H. and Prendergast, M. (1931) The German
submarine war 1914-1918. London: Constable and Co. Ltd.

11
Fayle, C.E. (1920-4) History of the Great War. Seaborne trade. Vol. II. London: J ohn Murray.

12
Marder, A.J . (1969) From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. The Royal Navy in the Fisher era, 1904-
1919. Volume IV. 1917: year of crisis. London: Oxford University Press, p. 51.

13
Admiral of the Fleet Viscount J ellicoe of Scapa (1920) The crisis of the naval war. London: Cassell
& Co. Ltd, p. 4.

14
Newbolt (1928) op. cit., p. 385.

15
J ellicoe (1920) op. cit., pp. 33, 37 & 181; (1934) op. cit.

16
Since December 1916, this method of protected sailings had been limited to the Scandinavian trade,
using trawlers and because of the insistence of the Scandinavian ship owners. E. Keble Chatterton
(1923) The Auxiliary Patrol. London: Sidgwick and J ackson Ltd, pp. 216-17.

17
Sims, W.S. (1920) In collaboration with Burton J . Hendrick. The victory at sea. London: J ohn
Murray, p. 96.

18
D.R. Messimer (2001) Find and destroy: antisubmarine warfare in World War I. Annapolis,
Maryland: Naval Institute Press, p. 155.

19
This was one of six Sections, and included in its area of responsibility the detection of submarines
and mines. Its secretary was Sir Richard Paget, Bt, who later developed what came to be known as the
Paget Gorman method of signed speech.

20
J ellicoe (1920) op. cit., p. 4 and (1934) op. cit., p. 5.

21
Caroe, G.M. (1978) William Henry Bragg 1862-1942. Man and scientist. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, p. 88.

21

22
MacLeod, R.M. and Andrews, K.A. (1971) Scientific advice in the war at sea, 1915-1917: the Board
of Invention and Research. Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 6, no.2, pp. 3-40. This article is as
much an account of naval hostility to the intrusion of civilian scientists as one about the achievements
of the BIR, and the difficult environment is also thoroughly discussed in Hackmann (op. cit.).

23
J ellicoe (1920) op. cit., p. 54.

24
Sims (1920) op. cit., p. 23.

25
Newbolt, H. (1931) History of the Great War based on official documents by direction of the
Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Naval Operations. Vol. V. London:
Longmans, Green and Co., pp. 23, 58-9 & 138. It could also be argued that publication of accurate
information might have reinforced enemy policy. The Chief Naval Censor believed it necessary also to
deny the enemy means of checking their submarine officers reports and deciding which trades or areas
to concentrate on. Brownrigg, D. (1920) Indiscretions of the Naval Censor. London: Cassell and Co.
Ltd, p. 127. When later the effectiveness of their U-boats declined, the German authorities attempted to
maintain public confidence by themselves falsifying levels of British, allied and neutral merchant
tonnage losses.

26
Conversely, U-boat successes, and the ineffectiveness of British measures against them, were of
course played upon in the German press. See, for example, the leading article in the Klnische Zeitung
of 1 August 1917 by Kapt. von Khlwetter, chief press agent of the German admiralty.

27
Newbolt (1928) op. cit., p. 70.

28
Simpson, C. (1972; 1983) Lusitania. London: Longman; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, pp.
37-8. The present author has not been able to establish from family or archival sources any evidence of
Inglefields interest in such use of gulls.

29
MacLeod and Andrews (1971) op. cit., p. 6.

30
Hackmann (1984) op. cit., pp. xxiv, 13, 14 & 18. Marder notes that 20,698 of these suggestions were
submitted to the BIR between J uly 1915 and December 1916. Marder, A.J . (1959) Fear God and
Dread Nought. Vol. III: Restoration, abdication and last years 1914-1920. London: J onathan Cape, p.
270 (original source: Public Record Office [hereafter PRO] ADM 212/158). The Holland-Skinner
Report stated that the number of inventions dealt with by Section II between 5 J uly 1915 and 30 J une
1917 was 14,655, of which 9,825 concerned appliances to destroy submarines, the highest figure for
any subject of any section. The overall total of inventions submitted to every section in this period was
41,127. (PRO ADM 212/158.)

31
Grand Fleet Secret Packs 1914-18, vol. XLVII, Pack 0022, Sections C, D1, D2, PRO ADM
137/1927; vol. XLVIII, Pack 0022, Section D3, PRO ADM 137/1928.

32
Naval Staff, Admiralty (1920) The technical history of the Navy. TH 40, p. 63.

33
J ellicoe (1934) op. cit., p. 36; Kemp, P.K. (1952) op. cit., p. 103; Marder (1969) op. cit., p. 79; and
Blackening the moon. Evening News, 26 February 1919.

34
Brief reference is made to Mills in R. Compton-Hall (1991) Submarines and the war at sea 1914-18.
London: Macmillan, pp. 94-5.

35
Memorandum of the Meeting of the Sub Committee of Section II, held on Tuesday April 24
th
1917,
PRO ADM 293/5, p. 391. Parsons referred to the similar manner in which gamekeepers locate vermin
by observing the movement of birds.

36
He complained in 1928: One hears no mention of Downing Street follies, such as Sea-Lions on
which we were forced to waste time and energy; and in 1931: Valuable time, personnel, and money
had in fact to be wasted to prove the futility and childishness of this contention. Quoted in: A.J .
Marder (1969) op. cit., pp. 78 & 162, citing a draft of a letter from Duff to J ellicoe, August 1928. In a
22

highly classified report to the First Lord on 5 February 1917 concerning all ongoing anti-submarine
measures, Duff had much earlier described as extraordinary the BIRs attempts to chase submarines
with packs of seals ... on a Scotch Loch. PRO ADM 137/1927.

37
Mills later claimed he had seen them hundreds of miles from the Australian coast. Another problem
was how to ensure that the behaviour of trained birds would be imitated by others and permeate the
gull population (Kemp, 1952, op. cit.), but Mills had reported that each year at Exmouth he would start
training a new generation, the parents having migrated.

38
PRO ADM 293/7.

39
PRO ADM 293/5, p. 413; BIR Memorandum of Meeting of Sub-Committee, Section II, held on
Wednesday May 23
rd
1917. BIR Reports etc. 1915-1917 (Admiralty Library).

40
Kemp (1952, op. cit.) believed that preliminary trials were carried out in the Solent.

41
Hudson (1841-1922) is assessed in Allen, D.E. (1994) The naturalist in Britain: a social history. 2nd
ed. New J ersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 206-7 & 210. By 1917, Hudson was ill, and also caring
for his ill wife. He left no record of this episode, having ordered his executors to destroy his papers and
to discountenance any biography.

42
PRO ADM 293/5, p. 424.

43
BIR Memorandum of Preliminary Meeting of Sub-Committee, Section II, held on Tuesday J uly 17
th

1917. BIR Reports etc. 1915-1917 (Admiralty Library, London).

44
PRO ADM 293/5, p. 444. Lubow described this as a truly novel approach exquisitely simple,
and said rather vaguely that it was reported that British submarines submerged off the English coast
released large amounts of bread which floated to the surface and attracted flocks of seagulls. No
information is available as to how many times this association of events, behavior and submarine, had
to be repeated before the seagulls began to appear at the sight of the submarine alone. However, it is
told that when the gulls spotted a long, dark shadow moving beneath the surface of the waters, they
would proceed to flock to that place ... observed by human spotters on the shore. If the reported
location did not coincide with the known position of a friendly submarine, countermeasures would be
taken. It is not known how many German U-boats became victims of the scavenger gulls insatiable
search for food. Lubow (1977) op. cit.

45
PRO ADM 293/7. A brief account of the eccentric Kearton brothers, who promoted wild bird
photography and developed strange but effective camouflage and hides for bird watchers, can be found
in D.E. Allen (1994) ibid., p. 211. See also Mitchell, W.R. (2001) Watch the birdie. Giggleswick:
Castleberg, p. 99. Richard Keartons daughter made very brief mention of his involvement in this
unsuccessful trial, but no other reference to it has been found either in his publications or in Kearton
papers collected by Mitchell and donated to the University of Bradford (part of the W.R. Mitchell
Archive).

46
BIR scientists had first arrived at Hawkcraig in November 1915, and one of them, Albert Wood, later
wrote to Sir Ernest Rutherford of Section II: Commander Ryansaid that it [B3] was to be used by
both of us [Navy and BIR]. He could not tell us, however, when we could have it for our own use;
indicating that it would be possible for us to have it only on those occasions when he did not require it
himself - which occasions from our previous experience will probably be rare. Fisher Papers, St
Andrews University Library, 1192, Wood to Rutherford, 22 March 1916, cited by MacLeod and
Andrews (1971) op. cit., p. 21.

47
Hackmann (1984) op. cit., p. 29. An example of the attitude of the Royal Navy is a comment made
by Commodore Hall about the level of co-operation thought necessary: The only information to be
given [by naval officers to BIR scientists] was that the enemy submarines were in the sea and that
means were required to detect their presence. Memorandum of the Meeting of the Sub Committee of
Section II, held on Tuesday March 27
th
1917, and quoted in Report on the Present Organization of the
BIR (also known as the Holland-Skinner Report), September 1917, p. 7. PRO ADM 116/1430, as
23

cited by MacLeod and Andrews (1971, op. cit., p. 28). The report reveals the failure of the Royal Navy
to recognize the validity and contributions of civilian science.

48
Grand Fleet Secret Packs 1914-1918, vol. XLVII, Pack 0022, Section D2, pp. 360-8. PRO ADM
137/1927.

49
Mills, T. (1919) The Fateful Sea-Gull. Reading: Bradley & Son, Ltd, p. 57. The Fateful Sea-Gull
consists mainly of Millss account of his successful background and patriotism, a full and often
repetitive description of the development and testing of his seagull method, and selected reprints of
parliamentary and press reports that highlight both the seriousness of the U-boat problem and the
shortcomings of Admiralty policy in organization, research and experiment. (The date of publication
given is that recorded in the British Library catalogue. However, references in the book to occurrences
in December 1919 suggest that it was actually published later. A date of publication does not appear in
the volume itself.)

50
This problem might result in misdirected countermeasures. One of Millss sons later wrote in March
1918 to report a conversation with someone who had apparently served on the BIR, and who referred
to another possible consequence of the problem: We have got submarines blockading the German
coast, therefore it would be a grand thing for the Huns if the sea-gulls were to hover over them; they
could send out an aeroplane and soon finish them all off Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 76.

51
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 64.

52
The Imperial Hotel, Exmouth, where he stayed for a year.

53
Talbot claimed that lookouts on patrolling vessels took careful note of the behaviour of sea birds,
which would follow a submerged submarine relentlessly and expectantly. Talbot, F.A. (1915)
Submarines: their mechanism and operation. London: Heinemann, p. 236. During the BIRs sea lion
experiments at Lake Bala between March and J uly, 1917, curious gulls that circled above the sea lion
as it surfaced for air for less than a second (after remaining submerged for up to a minute at a time) had
sometimes helped as intermediate observers: We were often greatly helped in following the track of
the animals, and in finding them when they were lost by watching the action of the gulls. These birds
were always disturbed when one of the sea-lions came near them, and they often followed the animals
for considerable distances, circling round above them, and swooping down when the sea-lion put his
head out of the water to breathe. E.J . Allen, Report upon experiments on the hearing powers of sea-
lions under water, and on the possibility of training these animals as submarine trackers, BIR
30051/17 (Admiralty Board of Invention and Research, London, 1917), p. 10, full document preserved
as PRO ADM 293/5, pp. 450-469; and Wilson (2001) op. cit., p. 443.

54
The Bystander, 29 August 1917, p. 403.

55
Memorandum of the Meeting of the Sub Committee of Section II, held on Tuesday April 24
th
1917,
PRO ADM 293/5, p. 391.

56
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 69. The friend may have been Captain L.C. Cock, who had helped arrange
Millss meeting with Admiral Sir J ames Starten and who later wrote letters of encouragement to Mills.

57
Mills believed about 1,000 decoys at 5 each would be needed for trawlers and patrol boats.

58
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 75.

59
Millss letter of 16 February, 1918 from the Imperial Hotel, Exmouth was addressed to Edison at his
laboratory in Orange, N.J ., saying: I send you a few photographs and a cutting from a newspaper. By
this, no doubt, you will see that I am trying to train sea-gulls to follow submarines, under the water as
well as on the surface. I am looking forward to your new invention, and I hope you will be successful,
and that you are in good health. I have kept this matter to myself so if I do not hear from you I shall not
be offended. On 11 March he received a reply from W.H.M.: Your recent favour has been received.
We beg to say that Mr Edison is working night and day for the Government and cannot possibly spare
the time to personally examine suggestions or inventions offered in connection with matters of
24

National Defence. He has, therefore, directed that communications of this kind be returned to the
writers, with the suggestion that they communicate direct with Mr Thomas Robbins, secretary of the
Naval Consulting Board, 13 Park Row, New York, N.Y. Mr Edison has been away from home for
several months, and we do not know when he will return. Therefore, he has not seen your
communication, and we return it herewith. Mills (1919) op. cit., pp. 110-11. The author is grateful to
the editor of IJNH for pointing out that Edison chaired the Naval Consulting Board and worked with
the National Research Council (founded by Congress as an arm of the National Academy of Sciences
just as the United States entered the First World War), one of whose tasks, like that of the BIR, was to
review innovation of every sort, both well-conceived and hairbrained. It would appear that Mills had
aspired to have his imaginative and enterprising work recognized by Edison at a more personal level.
Like the BIR, the NRC included prominent academic scientists as well as those from an industrial
background. Their role of screening the huge number of suggestions from lay sources could not be
handled on the personal basis Mills hoped for; and it could also be that as a self-assured amateur
inventor he mistakenly hoped to be accepted on equal terms by an eminent applied scientist in the
person of Edison himself.

60
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 122.

61
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 153.

62
Letter to the Exmouth Chronicle, 24 August 1918. It is reproduced in his book (p. 144), alongside
one of the six photographs from Sea-lions that hunted U-boats in the Illustrated London News of 5
April 1919, pp. 480-481.

63
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 210.

64
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 160.

65
Mills (1919) op. cit., p. 66.





The Editors
International J ournal of Naval History
editors@ijnhonline.org

Copyright 2006, International J ournal of Naval History, All Rights Reserved

25